page_title: Soft-paste porcelain
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Soft-paste porcelain / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: Saint_Cloud_bowl_soft_porcelain_with_blue_decorations_under_glaze_1700_1710.
context_page_description: Soft-paste porcelain is a type of ceramic material in pottery, usually accepted as a type of porcelain. It is weaker than "true" hard-paste porcelain, and does not require either the high firing temperatures or the special mineral ingredients needed for that. There are many types, using a range of materials. The material originated in the attempts by many European potters to replicate hard-paste Chinese export porcelain, especially in the 18th century, and the best versions match hard-paste in whiteness and translucency, but not in strength. But the look and feel of the material can be highly attractive, and it can take painted decoration very well.
  The ingredients varied considerably, but always included clay, often ball clay, and often ground glass, bone ash, soapstone, flint, and quartz. They rarely included the key ingredients necessary for hard-paste, china clay including kaolin, or the English china stone, although some manufacturers included one or other of these, but failed to get their kilns up to a hard-paste firing temperature.
context_section_description: There were early attempts by European potters to replicate Chinese porcelain when its composition was little understood and its constituents were not widely available in the West. The earliest formulations were mixtures of clay and ground-up glass (frit).  Soapstone (steatite) and lime are also known to have been included in some compositions. The first successful attempt was Medici porcelain, produced between 1575 and 1587. It was composed of white clay containing powdered feldspar, calcium phosphate and wollastonite (CaSiO3), with quartz. Other early European soft-paste porcelain, also a frit porcelain, was produced at the Rouen manufactory in 1673, which was known for this reason as "Porcelaine française". Again, these were developed in an effort to imitate high-valued Chinese hard-paste porcelain. As these early formulations slumped in the kiln at high temperatures, they were difficult and uneconomic to use. Later formulations used kaolin (china clay), quartz, feldspars, nepheline syenite and other feldspathic rocks. Soft-paste porcelain with these ingredients was technically superior to the traditional soft-paste and these formulations remain in production.
caption: Saint-Cloud manufactory soft porcelain bowl, with blue decoration under glaze, 1700-1710.
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